There was a Masterpiece Theater series called Danger: UXB about bomb dismatlers during the Blitz in London. For even more distant period pieces, there was Branded and The Young Rebels.
And hey, going the other direction, there was a crazy little series called Star Trek…
E-Ring wasn’t all bad. I wish they had retooled the format to be a bit more like L&O: Original Flavor, and broke it up into two sections. 1/2 Pentagon political wranglings, 1/2 special ops adventure.
The Unit however is unwatchable because of the split focus between the soldiering and the wives back at home. The wives plots are always atrociously bad and cliche. Whereas the Unit plots could be as thrilling as ‘24’.
Watching pretty boy Benjamin Bratt trying to act like Mr. Bad Ass Black Ops (in the flashback episode that I watched) was pretty ludicrous.
The Gray Ghost only ran for 1 season, 1957-1958, so I don’t know if you would consider it successful. But it was a military drama about Mosby’s Rangers in the Civil War era.
Oakminster, I don’t know what TV market you’re in, but Black Sheep Squadren is in rerun constantly in the LA market (at least it seems like it).
Tour of Duty was good, but China Beach was great. And very female-character-driven.
I still put M.A.S.H. in the “other or both” catagory, as there was plenty of drama among the laughs. Obviously, it was a comedy first, but it wasn’t limited by it.
The Unit rocks (but I’m biased).
And killed Fox’s attempt at a series inspired by The Dirty Dozen.
My first thought when I saw the thread title was Call to Glory, which starred a pre-Coach Craig T. Nelson & a young Elizabeth Shue. Set in the early '60s, Craig was an Air Force test pilot. I liked the show a lot, but it didn’t last beyond its first season.
A very risky recent effort was FX’s Over There, which was about the current war in Iraq. Not surprisingly, it was controversial (neither pro or anti war people liked it very much) and didn’t get renewed for a second season. I notice that the afforementioned The Unit show has tiptoed around Iraq as much as possible.